“If you look just broadly at whether companies that lay off do better, the answer appears to be no.”

—Peter Cappelli, George W. Taylor Professor of Management and director of the Center for Human Resources at the Wharton School, on the effect of downsizing on corporate performance (The New York Times, Dec. 26)

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“As we know from the research, the performance of a large firm is due primarily to things outside the control of the top executive. … We call that luck. Executives freely admit this—when they encounter bad luck.”

—J. Scott Armstrong, a professor of marketing at the Wharton School, on how executives can influence a company’s value. Limited research on the topic has mostly found that broader market forces often have a bigger impact on a company’s success than an executive’s actions. (The New York Times, Feb. 7, 2015)